Best Sport-Touring Bike: Kawasaki Concours 14

Speed. Power. Handling. Agility. Stability. Comfort. Payload. It’s hard enough to pack all those endearing qualities into a motorcycle, and it’s even more rare to find them in great quantities in any one machine. But that’s what Kawasaki has accomplished with the Concours 14. It dances through the twists and turns of backroads as though that was its sole purpose in life, yet it glides down the open road with the greatest of ease, chewing up the miles smoothly, easily, comfortably. And the ZX-14-derived engine delivers what might be the most deceptive flow of eyeball-flattening acceleration offered by any motorcycle ever built. The big Conc won this award in the first two years of its existence, 2008 and ’09, then rolled into 2010 boasting numerous improvements and upgrades that further cemented its status as the finest sport-tourer on the planet.